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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24203677">Discipline and Devotion</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceans_Away/pseuds/Oceans_Away'>Oceans_Away</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lore Olympus (Webcomic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ares brought it on himself, BDSM, Bondage, Discipline, F/M, Femdom, Impact Play, Outdoor Sex, Reunion Sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:15:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,719</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24203677</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceans_Away/pseuds/Oceans_Away</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Demeter chases Ares away from his literacy lessons with Persephone (Ep 102), Ares returns home to Aphrodite. But Demeter's letter beat him to it, and Aphrodite is waiting with a surprise.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aphrodite/Ares (Lore Olympus)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Discipline and Devotion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ares skidded onto his back and bundled himself into the gorse bushes, stones and soil skittering around him and scuffing his leathers. He shuffled clumsily out of sight and ground his teeth and caught his breath roughly. He could still hear Demeter stalking around and battering the shrubs like she was hunting grouse. He tried to make his body as small as possible, which didn't do very much. His bulk made it extremely difficult to avoid the dense tangle of thorns and they stung his thighs and arms. But at least Demeter wouldn't think to dig for him in here, only a real desperate idiot would bury himself in a thorn bush. His leg cramped. He flinched. A green needle stuck him in the ass. He ground his teeth harder. He squinted through the veil of dainty yellow flowers camouflaging his bright skin, the white sun turning them to lace. Demeter's thrashing faded away. He dropped his head back and grunted. <em>That</em>, he thought, <em>was not worth it</em>.</p><p>*</p><p><em>This</em>, Aphrodite thought, <em>will be totally worth it</em>. She slid a polaroid of a blushing shepherdess next to one of a haughty jeweller's daughter. <em>It's going to be really tricky arranging this meetcute and both your parents are going to hate it, but trust me. It'll be worth it.</em> She put her hands on her hips and stood back to admire today's matchmaking. The desk of her plush study was littered with covert photographs of mortals, arranged in pairs and groups with heart-shaped post-its filled with curling notes about dynamics, pitfalls, clandestine moments and favoured date spots. It had gone easily this time. The Spring sun had turned the room the colour of fresh pink roses, the scents of mint and myrtle tumbled in through the open window. Love felt simple today, obvious, elegant. She smiled and breathed out long and low, letting her shoulders roll back. She scooped her hair on top of her head, like soft-serve blueberry ice cream, and cooled her neck. Something rapped on her window.</p><p>“You’re not supposed to look that attractive when no one can see you.”</p><p>Aphrodite looked up and smiled wide, glowing like an opening lily. “Hermes, my little strawberry tart.”</p><p>Hermes was perched on her window ledge, his hair wild from his flight and his round shoulder bunched up to his poppy cheek as he leaned in with a broad grin. “Afternoon, Lady Love.”</p><p>Aphrodite let her hair sweep back down and came to the window. “Where’s your shirt?”</p><p>Hermes shrugged.</p><p>“Of course,” she chuckled, “Peck my cheek, Pretty Bird.”</p><p>She put her face up and Hermes grinned even broader and popped a kiss on her bright blush. He drew back, a little redder, if possible, and twisted to rummage in his satchel. Aphrodite sneaked a glance at his smooth, athletic torso, glistening slightly from the exertion of his journey on the hot day. He smelled of chilli, pricking the scent of her incense in her study. He whipped his lightning smile back up and flourished a letter under her nose.</p><p>“Letter from Demeter.”</p><p>Aphrodite frowned curiously and took it. The paper smelled of garden peas and dandelion.</p><p>“She asked me to stay for a response.”</p><p>Aphrodite shot Hermes a sparkling look as she slid a sharp fingernail under the seal with a satisfying snick. “Oh, I know you, Jam Pot, you just want an excuse to sit with me a little longer.”</p><p>“Caught me.”</p><p>They exchanged a smile. She looked down at the letter, still smiling. She began to read. Her smile faltered. She read further. Her smile faded. She came to the end. Her fine brow arched and her lips pulled into a tight pout. Hermes watched her face, raising his eyebrows and shrinking back from the signs of her infamous temper. There was a long, tense silence.</p><p>“I see.” She said stiffly. “Please tell Demeter I’ll take care of it.”</p><p>Hermes looked at her a little longer, then nodded, restoring his smile. “One more kiss?”</p><p>Her pout perked up, she patted his cheek. “Don’t dawdle, Jam Pot.”</p><p>“Never.” He winked and pushed off on his lean arms, zooming into the air like a firework.</p><p>Aphrodite took a deep, slow breath, the pleasant ease of the day dissolving as she rolled her muscles like a waking panther on a tropical tree branch. Something ignited in her abdomen. Something else stirred just under her skin. She folded the letter carefully in her fingertips.</p><p>*</p><p>Ares took the long way home. He dragged his feet, the blaze of the sun lancing his bare shoulders, bronzing the gold. He was covered in nicks from the gorse thorns, his curls were knotted and strewn with yellow petals, and the backs of his legs were itching with streaks of dry earth. Actually, he was itching everywhere. There was a light irritation on the back of his neck and the crooks of his elbows, where the rims of the armour rubbed his skin, the line of his hair, his palms and lips and the insides of his thighs. He was hot and tense and there was a dull ache where excitement had been an hour ago. He trudged through the jostling wildflowers, their scrawny stalks and fragile faces making him feel too big to fit on the paths, angular and awkward. It always felt like this after a campaign. Big voices, big moves, big feelings, fires and ferocity, great sweeping scenes and the incredible violence of fine detail. It wasn't the sort of stuff that slotted into ordinary life. It made him feel like a piece of one jigsaw that a small child was trying to punch into the middle of another.</p><p>It was quiet when he got to the house. He'd been hoping for it the whole journey but as he came through the door into the spacious kitchen the emptiness jabbed him. The racket of the children, Eros' bellowed demands and gabbling phone calls. And Aphrodite, moving gracefully, as if through water, laughing and humming and snapping, playing with her hair, drumming her fingernails on the fridge door. The itch calmed. The kitchen smelled of citrus and almonds, a mixing bowl was soaking in the sink.</p><p>"Aph?" He called out. "Soda Pop, you home?" He wandered into the lounge. "Eros? Storge? Where's my babies?" Nothing. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, yellow petals flaked from his hair and fluttered to his feet. He clucked his tongue and went upstairs to shower.</p><p>Steam hissed and plumed into the tiled room, gumming in his sweat. He huffed and grunted as he peeled his armour away, shelling himself like a pistachio, raw and tender underneath. The hot water was piercing at first, he tensed. Then relaxed. He let it soak into him, the hard drum of it kneading his back and shoulders, the heat spinning a new protective shell around his body where the armour had been. He breathed in the lavender and aloe drifting from Aphrodite’s apothecary of lotions and gels and spritzes. He foamed something new in his hands and massaged it into his sore arms and tight chest and the ridged muscles of his thighs and calves. He tossed his head back and dropped into darkness as he screwed his eyes shut and his face flushed under the stream. He raked his fingers along his scalp and teased out the clench of his teeth and temples as he rubbed the roots of his hair. Yellow petals swept into the water and clumped in the drain with a few long, lilac strands. He lathered again, a fresh wave of lavender bursting into the dense air. He scrubbed his body deeper, sloughing off the last of the months’ worth of soreness, of camp beds and the din of bronze on bronze and the flare of old injuries. His hand wandered to his cock, stroking it clean. His mind wandered to the picnic blanket, to the shade behind the secretive hedges, to the pert, pink body of Persephone, kneeling straight-backed like a little know-it-all at school assembly, her body cupped by that dress into that neat, plump hourglass with an hourglass glimmer under the sun, her cute, choppy hair exposing her neck, her huge, trusting eyes. Well, trusting-ish. Her kiss had been withdrawn, inexperienced, but sweet, yielding, mouldable, like warm cookie-dough. Cradling her back in his hands, he’d been able to feel her hesitating and settling, letting herself shape to his touch. And underneath that, something powerful and vengeful and hungry, somewhere deep that maybe even she hadn’t found yet. Her tongue was just stirring, just flicking up to meet his, when she’d ferreted him out. <em>Damn it.</em> <em>Who opens their eyes mid-kiss anyway?</em> Honestly, he was a bit insulted the ruse had worked up to that point. He would have liked it to be a little less instantly believable that he was completely illiterate, and for a week in his company to have at least raised doubts.</p><p>He stroked himself softly, closing his eyes and letting his head fall forward so the water lavished on his neck. His mind drifted and Persephone’s raspberry-ripple curves tinged and swirled and now he was thinking about the lavender shower gel, and about his bed upstairs, their bed, and <em>her</em>. Her hair gushing over the pillow as she writhed on her back, the weight of her on him, the way she moved greedily against him like the sea on a fishing boat, sweeping him away. The hiss of water on porcelain became the way she sighed, sharp at first, then cascading with a touch of laughter, whispering his name over and over like it was a lucky charm.</p><p>He turned the water to cold for the last two minutes.</p><p>He padded naked and shining into the bedroom, letting the air pat him dry. She’d left a window open. Her satin camisole was draped on the bed. One of the journals she kept for matchmaking was open on the bedside table under a red-frilled lamp. A blue stiletto was discarded on the floor. He eyed its spike and his mouth twitched and he felt a small, pointed tingle on his chest. He collapsed heavily onto the cream sheets and flexed his back to feel the mattress welcome him and the silk cool him. He rolled onto his front and lazily picked up the open journal.</p><p>
  <em>Boreas the pig farmer thinks Phoebe the wine-maker is more in love with Orestes the oyster seller than she is with him. She is, in fairness, but Orestes isn’t right for her. Make her allergic to oysters? They are Orestes’ only move. Give Boreas a hook-up to boost confidence? Check Phoebe’s jealousy tendencies first. Stop Boreas making “porking” jokes. They are not helping. </em>
</p><p>Ares chuckled to himself. No one blurred the line between divine intervention and nonsense meddling better than Aphrodite. He loved watching her plot her insane, tangled, punishingly complicated maps, her attention to detail, her absorbing passion for the minutiae of behaviour and emotion.</p><p>
  <em>“A butterfly flaps its wings and it could cause a hurricane.” She’d said once. “So a fisherman looks up and smiles at the right moment and it could cause a whirlwind.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So,” He’d said. “Is that what happened with us? Did I look up and smile at the right moment?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>She’d pinched his arm. “No, you were a whirlwind already, this poor butterfly couldn’t escape no matter how hard she beat her wings.” </em>
</p><p>The memory tumbled into thinking about sex again. He groaned sulkily and rolled onto his back, snatched up her camisole and flung it over his face, smothering himself in its coolness and its perfume and the subtle underlying scent of her body. Why wasn’t she home? Why had he let himself get side-tracked? Why hadn’t he just come home before she went out? The look Persephone had given him as she threw him into the lion’s den flashed into his mind, taunting him for this further punishment. <em>Cheeky bitch. Actually, that was kind of hot.</em> He puffed out and the camisole rippled. He cast it off, heaved himself up, pulled on his clothes and slouched back to the kitchen for a glass of water. As he got to the sink he saw a little pink post-it in the shape of a heart stuck to a rosemary plant on the windowsill. He plucked it and peered.</p><p>
  <em>Hey Sunbeam &lt;3 I’ve gone out to the orchard. Why don’t you join me? A xx </em>
</p><p><em>Fuck!</em> How long had he been missing that? Mooning about the house like a prick while she was just outside. He drank his water like he was slamming shots and strode out of the door, still barefoot, his heart picking up for the first time in hours.</p><p>*</p><p>Aphrodite peeked around the pink cloud of cherry blossom and smiled as Ares’ candle-glow form emerged luminous into the shade. The orchard at the back of their house was more like a wild wood. No matter how she tried to keep the gardens under control, she and Ares’ temperaments seemed to seep from the house into the soil, sending the plant life into a tangled frenzy, bursting with over-sized, bright fruits and flowers that clashed together on the vines like bells. The carefully arranged, neatly spaced fruit trees had all shifted out of place and reached for each other with laden branches, threading together in a busy canopy of pink and white and green, grasping and colliding and embracing. The grass was thick and healthy and sprayed with clusters of flowers, violet and blue and yellow, kissing Ares’ bare feet as he moved like a lumbering lion through the lattice work of sunshine and shadow. He was wearing a pair of rumpled jeans and a white tank top that hung a little loose as it shaped softly to the sculpt of his torso. One strap slipped down in an untidy tease. His hair was crinkled and glossy and his shoulders were brazed by sunshine, an umber stripe across his golden skin. He looked oddly innocent, walking through the trees like a lost shepherdess trying not to lure any lurking wolves. The ruby blush across his face had darkened and it made his eyes stand out. He had such beautiful eyes. And such a beautiful chest. And… <em>No. Come on, don’t get distracted. Just a little closer, Sunbeam, turn around...</em></p><p>Ares squinted through the orchard. The magic-lantern glimmer under the leaves was disorientating after the light of the garden. The sugared scent of blossom drugged the air and his feet sank into the cushion of earth, slowing him, like he was walking on sand. He was wavering between drowsiness and alertness, fighting the spell of the orchard with his eagerness for Aphrodite. She was somewhere here. He could always feel it when she was nearby. She disturbed gravity. There’d been a foot soldier in the enemy camp who always knew a storm was coming because it made his old injuries ache. That’s how it was for him with Aphrodite. He ached when she was coming, the air was weighted with her closeness and it got inside him and left a kind of residue in his joints. It would be like this until the storm broke over him, and then sweet relief. <em>Where are you, Beautiful?</em> The sound of fabric brushing bark. His ears pricked. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. His lips curled and his canines emerged. The drowsiness fled him. <em>I’m gonna get you…</em></p><p>He didn’t.</p><p>He was caught around the eyes and pulled into darkness. He staggered and yelped and threw his arms out to steady himself, then pressed his hand to his heart as it bucked and hammered with the surprise. He gasped for breath and growled as a low, river-babble laugh enveloped him.</p><p>“Got you!”</p><p>He spun and his sight returned, but he was hit by another kind of blindness as his vision flooded with her. She stood on her toes with her arms around his neck, looking up at him like a nodding bluebell. Her eyes were huge and sparkling, kaleidoscopic, galactic. Her full lips were parted in an inviting, cunning smile. Her luxurious figure was wrapped in a tight, white dress. He could just see the lines of her lingerie underneath it, mercilessly teasing the details of her body. She was barefoot, like him, giving them the look of wild spirits haunting the woodland. Her hair was flowing like spilled smoke and smelled of whatever had been baking in the kitchen. And her perfume. Gods, he’d missed her perfume. He scooped her up and crushed her to him and buried his face in her perfect shoulder.</p><p>Aphrodite was lifted off her feet and her heart went with her. Her body rushed with rapturous heat as she was pressed to him. He was a furnace. She giggled and nuzzled the tenderness behind his ear and reached out with her whole being to find that hottest part of him at the core of the fire. It was that special, solar-flare heat that only she could survive, that only she could bask in while it burned the world to cinders. He smelled of lavender soap. It was incongruous. She laughed again. He made a long, gruff, rumbling sound in his throat, somewhere between pleasure and agitation. She felt something leave him, jet out of him like steam from a kettle and ghost into the air. There was always a sort of exorcism when he came home. She hugged him tighter.</p><p>He gruffed again as he relinquished her and she bobbed back down to earth, cupping his square-cut jaw in her graceful hands.</p><p>“Did I spook you?” She said, her nose wrinkling mischievously like a mouse’s.</p><p>“You don’t scare me, you naughty pixie.” He grinned like a cat and pressed his brow to hers, scrunching his fringe.</p><p>She stroked his face. “I don’t believe you, Honey Bear, you’re jumpy today.”</p><p>He laughed bitterly through his nose. “I’ve got good reason.”</p><p>“Aaw, poor baby.”</p><p>Aphrodite circled her fingertip on the nape of his neck and his spine concertinaed. She wriggled happily as she felt his body give into the sensation, his abs crunching as he tried a little token resistance. He folded into her and the tail of his whine was snipped off as he covered her mouth with his and kissed her like a drowning man. That kiss. That one-of-a-kind, Ares-coming-home kiss. She drank deep of it, let it fill her to the brim. His arms locked her tight and his hands ran over her back and his tongue found hers and sparred with it forcefully. He was grabby and impatient, adolescent, like he’d forgotten how many times they’d done this, like he was seizing the moment with some unattainable, forbidden girl who was going to slip through his fingers any moment. She loved this about him. This heady revived virginity. This clumsy, immature, corruptible gluttony.</p><p>She freed her lips and caught her breath, smiling at the tingle of her own blush. “I can’t believe you just called me a naughty pixie.”</p><p>“You are a naughty pixie.” He chuckled, snatching another kiss from her that made her head spin.</p><p>“And you are a wicked warlord.” She curled her fingers and her sharp nails dug into his neck.</p><p>He growled and stumbled forward. “Witch.”</p><p>She tripped back and tugged him with her, tottering on her toes to keep their mouths connected. “Brute.”</p><p>“Succubus.”</p><p>“Pirate.”</p><p>“Siren.”</p><p>They kept stumbling, kept kissing.</p><p>“Rogue.”</p><p>“Hussy.”</p><p>“Rascal.”</p><p>“Vixen.”</p><p>“Savage.”</p><p>“Beautiful.”</p><p>“Honey.”</p><p>“Gods, I fucking missed you.”</p><p>They crashed into a peach tree. They gasped and giggled as they were showered by snowy petals, combing the mess from each other's hair with quick fingers. Their lips hooked again. Ares' pulse was going like a chariot, rocky and racing. He fumbled behind Aphrodite for a tough, low branch and hoisted her onto it, pulling her legs around his waist, seizing her thigh and hooking it over his hip. He grazed his hand over its roundness, stretching out his fingers to grasp as much of her as possible. He ploughed her dress out of his way to reveal a black ribbon garter and picked at it with a grin. Her fingers scraped into his tousled hair, prickling the roots so he shivered. His breath was coming in bellows pumps from his broad, strong chest. One hard hand gripped so she could feel it through all the fibres of her muscle, one careful hand at her back promised absolute safety. His eyes were closed and his brow was creased, as if in prayer. His lips pulled cloyingly from hers and pressed to her cheek, then her jaw, then the flute of her neck. His tongue drove in tight circles round the hollows of her throat. She sighed and the sigh tumbled into soft moans as she threw her head back for more, pulling him close, crossing her ankles at his back to cage him. He dusted her with his teeth and it sent sparks popping across her skin. She felt like he’d laid a series of charges along her body the day he’d left and now he was setting them off in a chain of controlled explosions. Her plans for him wavered in her mind. What if she just let him have her now? Let him detonate her?</p><p>She clawed down his torso and sneaked her hands under the hem of his top. She ran them over the bumps of his abs and the jut of his hip and the plains of his back. She felt her way expertly, traversing familiar ground, letting it all come back to her. It was a matter of muscle memory for them. His tongue found the spot at the curve of her shoulder that made her crazy, her fingertips found the dents over his kidneys that undid him.</p><p>“Oh fuck, Aph.”</p><p>“Yes, Ares.” She scratched his nipples.</p><p>“Ah! Harpy.”</p><p>“Strip.”</p><p>“Yes, Ma’am.”</p><p>He raised his arms like a puppet and she drew the tank top over his head and cast it into the grass. His arms fell back around her, stroking her hair, her waist, her ass. He kissed her and his lips were pressing silk. She undid his jeans faster than an escape artist. The zipper peeled apart like an opening bud. She looked down with a prickle of anticipation. His black boxer briefs were tightening around the swell of his cock, pushing up to be touched. She licked her lip. She sneaked her hand along the hard line.</p><p>A shock went through Ares. All his longing, all his hunger, all his thwarted excitement reared back up with a new vengeance. He dropped forward and caught her earlobe in his teeth and tilted his hips to press into the cup of her palm. Her hand fit to the mound through the fabric and it shocked him again. She rocked her hand gently. Images deluged in his mind: Aphrodite naked, Aphrodite in the sea, Persephone waving coyly, white sun through the gorse thorns, Aphrodite’s mouth, the strap of Persephone’s dress falling, Aphrodite’s tits, their bed, the flowers under his feet, the first time they had sex, the last time they had sex, Persephone collapsing back onto the picnic blanket and opening her legs, Aphrodite pinning him and baring her teeth. His blood was pumping, loud and erratic.</p><p>Aphrodite felt him fill her palm, growing to match her demand. The sharp tickle of his bite on her ear was deliciously distracting. She pressed her thumb into the tip of his cock and wetness sprung through the black cotton and kissed her touch. He made a strangled sound in her ear. She smiled wide and gave his jeans a harsh tug. They dropped to the ground and he stumbled to kick them away. She flattened her hands on the stove of his chest and drew the warmth into her, then pushed him back. He groaned as she did, his eyes a confusion of amber and garnet, round and regretful as he peeled from her.</p><p>“Plum Blossom, come on…” He stuck out his lower lip, like a kid denied candy.</p><p>“I want to look at you.” She said with a twinkle.</p><p>She levelled him at arm's length, cocked her head and surveyed him brazenly. He smirked at her and stood with his palms spread to invite her eye. He looked touched by Midas. He glimmered treasure-gold, bronze and brassy in the shadows of his musculature, sunflower where the light touched him. His body was hard and defined, etched with thin trails of old scars and fresh healing, like magma showing through the cracks in volcanic rock. One new sprawling stain surrounded his belly button, faded to peach and dissipating in the dips between the contours of his abs. She rested her eyes on it and frowned. Ares shifted his weight a little and one arm drifted in as if to conceal it. She shot her eyes back up to his and he stopped himself. Her gaze fell to the smooth landscape from shoulder to shoulder across his open chest. The soft furrows around his collar and in the slopes to his biceps and sternum made little pools of shadow like she was looking across a desert at sunrise. He had a strange look of hulking agility, both poised and awkward, both lean and heavy. He took up a great deal of space, but the space didn’t feel wasted. He didn’t squander movement, everything was with purpose, everything was complete and unified. He was planetary. She let her eyes laze to the trails of copper shadow over his hips that shaped the taper of his torso and disappeared into his boxer briefs. She eyed his hardness and sucked her lip. She flicked her warm gaze back to his face. His look was playful. There was a shimmer on his mouth from her lip gloss.</p><p>Ares smiled and leaned forward to place his hands on the branch either side of her. He rested his lips on hers and murmured. “Let me see you too.”</p><p>He’d already pushed her dress so far that it was bunched at the very top of her thigh, making a pretty purple heart from there to her knees, squeezed primly together as she drew back with a hard-to-get arch of her brow. His ember eyes smouldered. He brushed his knuckles up her bare arm and hooked the strap of her dress with one finger and pulled it down. It peeled away from her, unveiling the lace of her bra. His eyes dropped and his breath stilled. He lowered his head so his tousled, creamy curls tickled her collar, and he kissed the line where the lace touched her skin. Her intake of breath pushed her to his lips, he took the encouragement and pressed a path of hard, deep kisses along the soft rise of flesh. His fingertips crept to the close of her thighs and teased them apart, sliding his touch into the dark.</p><p>
  <em>Don’t. Get. Distracted.</em>
</p><p>She slapped his hand.</p><p>“Ow!” He whipped back and glared at her.</p><p>“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Honey Bear.”</p><p>“Actually, I’m catching up with where I’ve been for fucking months.”</p><p>“Greedy.”</p><p>“Justified.”</p><p>“You’re such a spoiled brat.”</p><p>He narrowed his eyes at her and ground his teeth. She flicked her foot up and pushed him away with a toe to his stomach. His eyes flashed scarlet and he grabbed her ankle and lunged forward and snatched the hem of her dress. She sliced her fingernails across his chest and he reeled away again. For a split second they froze, him with one foot back, ready to leap, her with her hand up, brandishing her claws. Then they were off. Aphrodite flung her legs round and jumped from the branch, Ares vaulted over it, and they tore through the orchard. She cackled and squealed in mad delight as she ran through the trees, petals cast up about her feet like splashing water. He pursued with snarling laughter, caught and clipped by spidering branches, littering his body with scuffs and pollen powder and grass stains. His long stride easily kept apace with her delicate, doe-like bounding and he caught her over and over, nibbling her shoulder, tickling her belly, squeezing her, spinning her, scooping her up, kissing her and pinching her, cupping her breasts and gliding the length of his finger along her gusset so she quivered like grapes being snapped off the vine. He always let her go. Chased her again. Dropped back to let her get ahead then charged in for another hungry pounce. He felt like he was whipping a spinning top, watching with a thrill as it got faster and faster and wilder and wilder. Each time he clutched her, his body rushed like he was gulping whiskey. She was getting misty and sticky from the run, he could feel her gleeful energy cantering into him, into the whole woodland, bringing it to vibrant, bursting life. He chased her round an apple tree in tight, dizzying circles, like a labrador chasing its tail. He lost sight of her. He stopped, teetering on the balls of his feet as his head kept spinning.</p><p>Pain cracked across the back of his legs.</p><p>He yelped and whirled around and his eyes widened as he saw Aphrodite again. She stood tall with her bare feet squarely apart and the gentle curves of her body drawn taut, like a coiled spring. Her hair fell in a sultry sweep over one eye and the other eye glared a smoky, dangerous violet. In one poised hand she was wielding a long, fine, black cane, brandishing it like a rapier. The other hand was proudly on her hip. His cheeks flushed, his heart skipped, his mouth went dry. The fizzy sweetness of her excitement still lingered in his senses, but the flavour was changing. He could taste it now, an undercurrent of anger. It was like the moment when you’re eating a cupcake and suddenly bite down on concentrated cinnamon. His skin prickled.</p><p>“Run, Sunbeam.” Her voice was velvet. “You’re in some trouble.”</p><p>Ares’ heart bucked and he fled. The chase was different this time. The ducking and darting and bubbles of mirth were replaced by surges of speed and rhythmic panting. They turned leonine. Her feet barely touched the earth, her body angled and precise like an arrow. His complex mechanism of muscle worked hard and harmoniously, rising and falling and rounding and pushing and propelling. She could see it in his back and his legs, the countless connections as his refined, attuned body spoke to itself. He was a living conversation between muscle and bone and blood.</p><p>He slowed, let her strike his ass, leaped forward again, his pulse chiming with the sting. “Why am I in trouble?” He called over his shoulder with a flash of his brash smile.</p><p>“Don’t question me.” She snapped, rapping his thigh.</p><p>“I’m not questioning you.” He grinned, dodging another swipe. “I’m questioning the situation.”</p><p>“The situation…” Aphrodite swung the cane and he bounded out of reach. “...is you’ve been a naughty little scamp.” She sprang after him.</p><p>“Isn’t that to be expected?” He shrugged cockily, mid-spin, and she cracked him hard on his flank, he coughed and staggered and picked up running again.</p><p>“Not after I’m through with you.”</p><p>His pulse kicked again and his smile soared and he raced into the shadows. Aphrodite turned round a spiralling trunk and halted. She’d lost him. She began to prowl, moving under the blossom like a catfish under the sun-bleached surface of a pool. “Where are you, Lemon Cake?” She cooed into the stillness. “I’m going to take such a slice out of you.” She cracked the cane against a tree and the sharp sound split the quiet. A dove took flight with raucous flapping, sending a flurry of pink petals to earth. Aphrodite calmed her breathing, carefully rolled her feet heel to toe to make her step silent. She strained for the sound of movement, listening over the soft chorus of singing and scampering in the branches. Her skin was almost stingingly alert, tingling with every brush of breeze and whisper of touch from the reaching leaves. There was a clean film of sweat across her upper back and her neck was still tender from his mouth. “Come out, come out, wherever you a-AAAAH!”</p><p>She was seized from behind, squashed into the granite grip of two huge, strong arms, wrenched from the earth, and whirled round and round, kicking and screaming, her arms pinned to her sides. Her back flushed hot and her stomach boiled. Ares set her down roughly, still wrapping her like a python. She could feel his heart ramming against her spine and his chest billowing into her shoulder blades as he panted. His breath singed her ear as he murmured mischievously. “What are you going to do now, my Amazon?”</p><p>Aphrodite pursed her lips and tilted her head to open her neck for him. He ducked without hesitation, tucking into her with his tongue and teeth. She sighed low and slinked against him, feeling the rumble of satisfaction in his chest. She slid her arm with the slink and reached behind her and cupped his balls, cradled tight in cotton. She grabbed and twisted. Ares groaned and crumpled and dropped to his knees. She spun round him like a warrior dancing round a fire, twirling the cane, and landed firmly on her feet behind him. She bent her knee to rest in the furrow down his back. She braced the cane in both hands and hooked it under his chin, reining his head back, forcing his large, round eyes to meet hers. They were effervescent amber with pleading and passion. He spread his thighs, brushing the crocuses, alluringly vulnerable.</p><p>Ares gazed up at her, her sweet plum face framed by the willow branch fall of her hair. The look she levelled at him was irresistible and deadly, giving him the same weightless thrill as staring over a cliff edge. He spied the little beauty spot on her cheek and smiled. Slowly, he raised his hand and glided it up her calf and thigh, then tickled the inside of her wrist where her pulse was thrumming. “Leaving my hands free?” He husked. “Is my Spartan queen going soft?”</p><p>Aphrodite smirked and released his chin to tap the cane on his balls. He flinched. “Looks like you’re the one of who needs to worry about going soft.” She said, glancing at his diminished hardness after the chase. “Drop those panties, Princess.”</p><p>Ares licked his teeth and shuffled in the cage between her knee at his back and the cane across his body, slipping his underwear down over his legs and discarding it in the grass. He took his cock in his hand and began to knead it gently, framing it with his fingers, moving slowly to let her see every detail of his hunger as he stiffened and darkened and grew towards her. Aphrodite rippled with anticipation. His cock was the same raw ruby as the blush across his face. It looked like a strawberry popsicle. She sucked on her tongue. She teased the nape of his neck. He dropped his head back into her hand and purred. “Like what you see?”</p><p>“Alright, now you’re having too much fun.” She replied with a sharp tut.</p><p>She slipped the cane between his teeth, like slotting a bit into a horse’s mouth, and drew her skirt up, cocking her leg out so he could see. His gaze softened on her skin. She found the black ribbon garter and with one smooth tug, unlaced it and drew it out into a long satin tie. Ares grinned round a hard chew on the cane. She crouched behind him. She reached round for the hand still kneading his cock, and closed her grip over it. She tightened his hold and guided him in a few hard, rapid pumps that made him gasp and chuckle wickedly. Then she plucked his hands and folded them at the small of his back, binding them in the satin, looping and winding to hold him fast. He writhed and rocked to keep his freedom, grumbling weak protests around the cane. She sunk her teeth into his neck. He froze. She held him like a fox holds a hare. He exhaled with a long shudder. She pulled back, leaving a circle of dainty red crescents in his flesh. She stood and retrieved the cane. He snapped his jaws at her, wrinkling his nose sulkily. She giggled and levelled the cane across his chest and tapped it once. A bright purple bud sprouted from the end and bloomed and wilted and in its place was a silver pinwheel, catching the light through the trees and glinting murderously.</p><p>Ares’ eyebrows went up and he shrank back a little. “Oh. Shit.” He said nervously. “I am in trouble.”</p><p>“Oh yeah.” Aphrodite’s voice was both cold and seductive. “Big time.”</p><p>She touched the pinwheel to his chest. She pressed it down. She rolled it along his skin. Ares shivered and a thin “Oh…” escaped him. She pressed again, rolled again. He shivered again. His cock was thick and straining, his Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down as his breath kept catching. She trailed the pinwheel in firework tracks around his torso, lingering on his belly button and his tender, persimmon nipples. His eyes dropped closed and his body wavered between tight tension and sinking relaxation. He buckled and his face collapsed into the inside of her thigh, opening his mouth on her plumpness and covering it in devoted, dreamy kisses, his tongue slow and searching. He trembled and rocked his hips a little in want. He moaned in a coursing stream under his breath. His hair scrunched on the hem of her dress.</p><p>Aphrodite was aching at her core. His mouth was too close, too hot, too tempting. This absolute innocence was her preserve, was their special, shared secret. She watched the pinwheel sketch calligraphic patterns in rosy strokes across his golden skin, watched his knees sink into the green earth, watched a shining slick appear on the tip of his cock, watched his stern brow crumple just above his closed, trusting eyes.</p><p>“Ares?” She murmured sweetly.</p><p>“Uh… uhuh?” He didn’t look up, didn’t pull his mouth from her.</p><p>“You adore me, don’t you?”</p><p>“Mmm…” He lapped her thigh and spoke muffled into it, his lips still pressing. “You know how I feel about you, Plum Blossom.” He fell back to his kisses.</p><p>“And because you adore me, you’d never break our rules, would you?”</p><p>Ares grinned so his teeth teased the patch he’d licked tender. “Weren’t rules made to be broken?”</p><p>She cast the pinwheel sidelong across his chest, scratching him and leaving an angry, scarlet streak. He yapped and winced, then snarled and bit her thigh like an offended kitten. Aphrodite jerked her leg and threw him off balance. She kicked him onto his back, his hands crushed underneath him. She pinned him there with her foot on his chest, like he was a red admiral butterfly. She twirled the cane and jabbed the blunt end under his chin, straining it up to open his jugular.</p><p>“Not mine.” She crooned. “Not by you.”</p><p>She twirled the cane again and wheeled him sharply. He sucked in through his teeth and the hiss echoed in the trees. It collided with another echo. Somewhere in the shadow puppetry of the orchard, there was laughter. High, tuneful laughter. Laughter like the sound of a knife being sharpened on a leather strap. Ares felt frost creep into his hot blood. He looked up at Aphrodite with his eyes even larger and rounder and redder. “What’s happening?”</p><p>Aphrodite smiled dangerously. “Just what happens when you don’t follow the rules.”</p><p>Ares frowned, then his eyebrows shot back up and his body shrank into the daisies as she drew the pinwheel down to hover over his cock. “O- Ok now, Soda Pop, be cool.”</p><p>“Remind me of our safe-word.”</p><p>“Will I need it?”</p><p>“Say it.”</p><p>Ares swallowed. “Peace.”</p><p>Aphrodite’s smile fanned across her face, dazzling and fatal. Then she tossed her hair and called out to the trees. “That’s the one to listen out for, ladies!”</p><p>Ares perked up and his eyes darted around the shadows, his pulse galloping and his ears back like a hound’s. Aphrodite spun the cane to rest across her shoulders, winked and sashayed away. Ares scrambled to sit up, floundering with his tied wrists. Then he saw them. Three tall, full figures emerging from the confusion of pink and green that enclosed him, each pinning him in place with needle grins and sparkling, penetrating gazes. They were carrying sprigs of white, lacy myrtle. They were encroaching, circling, padding barefoot through the crocuses like hunting wolves closing in on a deer. His throat felt full of sand. His cock twitched. Aphrodite only summoned her handmaidens when he’d been very good. Or very, very bad. He flicked his tongue and caught the cinnamon of her anger on the air. <em>Ok. Bad. Fuck.</em></p><p>The first his eye fell to was the one who always instantly drew the eye. Aglaea, <em>Splendour</em>, was a dark, shining gold from her elaborate interlocking braids to her bejewelled fingers and toes. Even her eyes were gold. It was as if she’d been dipped in it, like a hazelnut into caramel. She was broad and ample and muscular, adorned with bangles and pendants, naked but for a veil of shimmering, fine, gold chains over her breasts and round her pelvis. She fixed him with a look of haughty disdain and sneered down at him.</p><p>He glanced away and he warmed as his eye roved over a pear-shaped, magenta figure in a tight magenta, satin dress, slit up the side to show a long, teasingly cocked leg. His eyes travelled up to dark pink lips, like rhododendron buds, and large, flame-lily eyes, kindling in the shade of glossy pink ringlets. Peitho, <em>Seduction</em>, sucked her full lip into her mouth and let it bloom back, darker and shining. Heat trickled down Ares’ spine.</p><p>He pulled his eyes from her. When they fell on the final figure, his chest tightened. She stood with incredible pride, by far the tallest of them, her head held high and her mouth a stern, sullen curve. She had strong legs, shaped and honed by riding. Her hair fell in a rod-straight, black curtain down one side to her waist. Her skin was the same deep jet, but sparkling all over with a cold light, as if encrusted with millions of microscopic crystals. Her almond eyes were black too, the whites barely visible. Her body was draped in a white fur coat, opening in a wide V over her collar and cleavage. Her canines were long and pointed and poked from the seal of her lips. Hegemone, <em>Mastery</em>, stared Ares down until he felt like he could fit in her pocket.</p><p>The Graces prowled around him, dizzying him, cowing him. They were somehow stripping him, making him more naked than he already was, peeling away any semblance of bravado and trampling it in the grass like discarded lemon rind. His breath came short. His heart pounded and the blood echoed in his ears. Hegemone reached into her coat and withdrew a coil of black silk rope. Ares’ heart stopped. Everything stopped. Birdsong, breeze, the hyena steps of the Graces. The air tensed.</p><p>They pounced.</p><p>Ares was flung into a confusion of scents and touches and visions. Their bodies crowded him and he flushed with heat. Their hands were precise, but grasping, drowning him in layer upon layer of stroke and catch and claw. The silk grazed then burned his skin as it was dragged across his body and coiled and wound and yanked tight. With each sharp pull he was reshaped, his joints clicking and his muscles smouldering as he was flipped and folded and passed between them like a doll. As each caught him they would taste him or nip him, pinch his ass or squeeze his bicep or ruffle his hair, giggling higher and louder until it drowned out the rush of blood in his ears. In a delirium of sensation, Ares found himself hoisted in a hog-tie and soaring from the ground, his stomach dropping and his cry dying in his throat. He shook the dizziness from his head and earthed himself in the cut of the rope into his flesh, the burn of his muscles, the sudden coolness of the air as he hung from the branches. His heart hammered violently. He was hovering at the height of the Graces’ scheming grins. He looked wildly about, searching for Aphrodite, calling her name hoarsely, swinging a little as he twisted.</p><p>She bloomed out of the pink darkness ahead of him like smoke, strutting slowly with her hands on her hips, swaying in a snake-charm rhythm. Seeing her immediately soothed him, then panicked him. She held his eye steadily and stopped with her mouth just out of reach of his. A wisp of her perfume lifted him briefly out of the growing pain of his bindings. The pain returned harsher.</p><p>“So…” He said, a small, charming smile sneaking back onto his lips. “I’ve been a naughty little scamp?”</p><p>Aphrodite arched an eyebrow and glanced dismissively away. She reached into her cleavage and withdrew a neatly folded piece of paper. “I had a letter from Demeter this afternoon.”</p><p>Realisation clanged in Ares’ insides then thunked into his stomach and sat there like a rock. <em>Oooh. Fuck.</em></p><p>Aphrodite clocked the dawning on his face. She unfolded the letter delicately and began to read in a crisp tone.</p><p>
  <em>“My Dear Aphrodite. This week, Ares was found injured in my lands. My Kore, in her endless compassion and capability...”</em>
</p><p>Aphrodite and Ares exchanged the same exasperated look.</p><p>
  <em>“...treated his wound and cared for him in his recovery. She is a trusting and generous child, and Ares used this to his advantage. He claimed to Kore that he could not read…”</em>
</p><p>She stopped and looked at him drily. “I know it wouldn’t shock anyone, but really, Sunbeam.” Ares narrowed his eyes. She continued.</p><p>
  <em>“...and then pressed her for private lessons that he might use the time alone to seduce her. My daughter’s virtue was only saved by her timely deduction of his dishonesty this afternoon. I considered contacting his mother, but thought it better to warn you first.”</em>
</p><p>She folded and replaced the paper, speaking its final words with a simmer in her voice.</p><p>
  <em>“If you wish to keep your dog, I suggest you get him on a leash.”</em>
</p><p>A ripple of murmurs went through the Graces. Ares glanced around them nervously then looked back at Aphrodite’s venomous expression. “Soda Pop, come on.” He jabbered. “We have an understanding, you and I. We didn’t want to be tied down. We’re allowed a little play away.”</p><p>Aphrodite spoke like a cobra sliding on silk. “This is not about whether we’re allowed to play away, this is about the rules we play by. You’re my big, tough guy, my pillar of strength. I think of you as someone who likes to be matched, challenged. Not a shy little boy chasing after girls who don’t know any better. It’s lazy, Lemon Cake, I’m disappointed in you.”</p><p>“It was just a joke, Babe. It was harmless. A bit of fooling around.” He swung helplessly in his cat’s cradle.</p><p>“Yes, just a sprinkle of deception, the lightest touch of pressure.”</p><p>Ares opened his mouth and closed it again.</p><p>“I allow you some playing away, Sunbeam, it does not make people your playthings.”</p><p>“You don’t even like her!”</p><p>Aphrodite and the Graces all made the same feline growl. “Whether I like her is irrelevant. In the household of the Goddess of Love, we maintain certain standards of behaviour in our conquests. We romance, we care, we check frame of mind, we make sure everyone has a good, safe time. We do not lie, we do not take advantage.”</p><p>Ares sighed through his nose. “Look, I’m sorry, Ok? She was cute. And I’d just been impaled on a tree, so I was kind of stressed out. I didn’t even realise she was a goddess at first, I thought she was just a village girl.”</p><p>“And we don’t use the word ‘just’ about our lovers.”</p><p>“Come on.” He snorted. “You pull this kind of shit all the time!”</p><p>Aphrodite’s eyes flared electric and the Graces tutted. “Not on innocents and totally unprovoked!” She folded her arms. “And besides, I’m not the one strung up in a tree, am I? I don’t think you’re exactly in a position to be giving me attitude right now. Is he, girls?”</p><p>Ares did have to give her that. A titter skipped around the circle enclosing him.</p><p>“Do you think he’s actually sorry?” Aphrodite raised her voice.</p><p>“No, Ma’am.” Came the trilling, sugary replies. “Not sorry enough, Ma’am.”</p><p>“Shall we teach him a lesson?”</p><p>Ares felt every inch of him ignite. It was as if the rope was a wick with a fizzing spark travelling around it towards his core, turning him into bundled dynamite. Aphrodite gave the Graces an almost imperceptible nod. Hegemone stroked her myrtle sprig through her long fingers and the leaves and petals strimmed away and fluttered to her feet, and as her hand kept drawing up the stalk it lengthened and twisted. Ares blinked and she was holding a long, leather-tipped crop. Aglaea twizzled and flourished her myrtle and the dark green stalk spun into gold and the white flowers burst into jostling fine, gold chains. She swished the tendrils of a metal flogger. Peitho bobbed the myrtle to her nose and her eyes glittered over the white crown of petals. She plucked a flower head and closed it in her hand. When she lowered the sprig again she was holding an opulent white feather, when she opened her palm the flower head had crystalised to ice. Aphrodite took a soft step and closed the gap between them. She cupped his face and bobbed up on her toes to kiss him tenderly. He felt his blood move to his lips, as if it was magnetised to her.</p><p>“You ready, Honey Bear?” She whispered.</p><p>Ares shuddered. His eyes were bright and a small, anxious smile escaped him like steam. He nodded.</p><p>Aphrodite snapped her fingers.</p><p>The Graces moved swift and silent. Aphrodite kept Ares between her hands as the pain started. She felt his jaw clench and a tremor skim under his skin. Hegemone struck first, like she was breaking a stallion. She thrashed the crop against his thigh and he cried out and grit his teeth. He snarled as the gold chains of the flogger snatched the sunlight and dashed it across his other thigh. Peitho sneaked under him and tickled the feather around his abs, livening his skin, hardening the muscle, waiting until he was tingling madly, then icing him so the cold pierced him as if he were a pin cushion. Her laugh was like champagne. She caught the eyes of her friends and began to prepare the ground for them, tickling all over his body so their strikes blazed on his skin and penetrated to his marrow. The flogger clawed and the crop stung and the feather turned his yelps and cries to sputtering laughter that shook his body and made the rope chafe him. Aphrodite pulled him into another stirring kiss and his head reeled. He returned it desperately, devotedly, moaning into her mouth as Peitho pressed the ice to his nipple then tweaked it with clever fingers. He broke his lips to gasp then plunged into kissing Aphrodite again, the orchard vanishing as he closed his eyes and fell into a tumult of sensation. Pain ricocheted around his body, pinging between the strikes like he was a pinball machine. The feather spun the stings and aches into gold, making his skin hum, harmonising with the scrape of the rope like a bow drawing across a violin. The ice numbed and reawakened him in taunting turns. He kissed Aphrodite feverishly, trying to pour himself into the sliver between their lips before he was annihilated.</p><p>Aphrodite smiled against his lips. She tried to stay stern, but he was too delicious, too entertaining. She stepped back from the kiss and savoured the taste of it, spiced honey. His head dropped forward and he barked as the flogger and crop whipped him simultaneously. His back flexed as he writhed in his bonds. The deep furrow down his spine filled with undulating bronze shadow. The rope dug into his flesh, flushing it, biting it, the pattern inlaid into him like marquetry. The Graces were delighting in him, jeering and snickering and whooping, playing him like a xylophone, pausing to peck each other’s lips, and quickly embrace each other, and steal bites of Ares’ fine form. He might as well have been a hunk of beef thrown to a pack of jackals. Aphrodite tilted his chin back up and his eyes were glassy and soft, only half open. She nuzzled his nose.</p><p>“Love me?”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s a curse.”</p><p>“Only a little one.”</p><p>She gazed at his body. Everything about him was twice as defined in the extreme effort of the suspension. His strength was intoxicating when it was confined. He looked like a storm cloud that was about to break. His ass and thighs and arms and back were streaked and stained red from the beating. He looked like a cheesecake drizzled with raspberry coulis, like a tequila sunrise. She rose balletic onto her toes again and stroked around his throat. He sighed, groaning and shivering as the ice skidded along his shaft. She kissed his neck, along his shoulder, feeling him fidget under her lips. She bobbed back down and stepped beneath him, trailing her hands over his torso as she melted into his shadow. She stroked soothingly around his chest as Peitho tickled the backs of his legs and Hegemone and Aglaea thrashed his ass. She caught his nipple in her teeth and sucked.</p><p>The sensation rolled through Ares. Aphrodite's mouth alternated hard and soft, teasing him mercilessly. He trembled and moaned as she moved like a shark under a ship, kissing down his body. As her lips traced his stomach he started to ache fiercely. Sweat broke across his back. Pain and frost echoed through him. Her tongue flickered on the tip of his cock. He moaned rougher, wanting. Something inside him started to unravel.</p><p>Ares’ taste was salt and smoke. Campfires and leather and cheap wine had infused in his meat. Aphrodite lapped the slick from his tip and peppered it with pretty, close-mouthed kisses. He strained and twitched. She chuckled. Peitho passed her beneath him and blew her a kiss, dancing the feather around his chest. He swayed above her as Hegemone and Aglaea battered him between them like they were playing tetherball. He barked again and it faded to a whimper as she closed her grip around the base of his cock and cupped his balls, rolling and squeezing them tenderly. He was thick and pine-hard, but malleable, supple. She closed her lips around the head of his cock and purred so it vibrated, moving her mouth luxuriantly around the smoothness. She danced her tongue wickedly on the peaks of his sensitivity. He stretched her jaw. He quivered between her teeth. His moans grew louder, echoing to her, surging and fading between cries of pain. She worked him at the base and slid her finger to tease his perineum. He made a coarse, pleading sound and it ribboned up her spine. She was tingling and blushing and sighing with satisfaction. Her mouth and her hands moulded to him, fit to his shape, to his coaxing need. She moved on him instinctively, letting herself drift into the bliss of his taste and his swell and his shape and motion and tracery of veins. She gave him a long, lascivious lick, then brought him deeper into her mouth, curled her tongue around him and sucked greedily.</p><p>Ares was coming apart. Weaving through the chorus of pain was one long, golden note of ecstasy. Aphrodite’s mouth was incredible. She was devouring him, all of him. He was her catch, her prey, nothing would be left of him after this, not even carrion. Her tongue was hot and restless, flicking and flourishing and serpentining, teasing him until he had to clench himself harder than marble to resist release. She squeezed his balls and pressed behind them, shooting sensitivity up his body.</p><p>Aphrodite felt tremors between her lips. He was close. He was holding back. She smiled around his cock and took him deeper. He filled her mouth, her senses. She thrummed between her thighs and in the pit of her stomach. He was thicker now and seeping and tight and hotter than the barrel of a smoking pistol.</p><p>“Aphrodite… I… Oh fuck… You’re too much…” There was a gruff, dizzy chuckle in his voice.</p><p>Peitho’s champagne laughter effervesced through the trees. “He’s lost.” She drawled with a satisfied smile.</p><p>Aglaea trailed the fine chains along her palm. “Surrender, Warlord.” She murmured into his ear. “Give yourself up.”</p><p>Ares bit down hard on his lip. The desperate want was building and building, he felt like a bursting pressure gauge. He glared at Aglaea.</p><p>Then a low, flint-sharp voice spoke into his other ear. “Are you a good puppy? Do you come on command?” Hegemone whispered.</p><p>Ares’ brow buckled. He moaned hoarsely.</p><p>“Come now, there’s a good boy.”</p><p>Hegemone kissed him with suffocating force. Aglaea took him from her and sucked brutally on his lower lip. Peitho popped up between them and threw her arms about his neck and melted their mouths together. Aphrodite gave him one last deep draw into her mouth and twisted her lips on him.</p><p>He fired into her heat. He cried out, casting Peitho from his lips, as he felt his body shattering apart. The pleasure coursed through him, rushing warm and cool and chasing the pain away in a furious stampede of wonderful relief. It cantered through his muscles, pummelling them soft, making his blood cells spin. His throat was raw from panting and calling. He gasped for air, swinging comically as the convulsions died away and he hung limp and ruined.</p><p>Aphrodite flushed violet and made a high sound of delight as he shot searing silver onto her tongue. She consumed his desire and his devotion like a temple offering. She unhooked from him, sighing happily through her nose, and stole back along his body to his head, holding a puddle in her mouth like the first snow of winter. The Graces stepped back, leaning on each other. Their weaponry wilted into white petals around their feet. Hegemone stroked Peitho’s hair, Peitho tickled the gold chains shimmering on Aglaea. Aphrodite faced Ares and met his drunk, carnelian eyes. She cupped his face and he leaned his cheek into her hand. She floated off the grass, pulling his face up with her. She sealed her lips to his and poured his come into his mouth. Ares gasped and spluttered. He tried to pull back but the ropes held him fast. She scooped with her tongue, pushing every last drop down his throat. He coughed and struggled and made muffled protests, but they died against the force of her kiss. When she pulled back from him, his lips were shining and his cheeks were red as pomegranate. He spat and his shoulder blades rolled like sand dunes as he heaved for breath. She smacked her lips with a smile, drawing her thumb across them and sucking it clean.</p><p>She kissed his forehead and drifted back to earth. She waved her hand and the rope began to unwind. Ares was lowered to earth in the net like barrels of whiskey from the deck of a merchant vessel. Aphrodite swept to the Graces, taking their hands warmly and patting their cheeks. They inclined their heads, starry twinkles in their eyes, and dissolved into the dimness of the lilac evening, leaving only the myrtle petals as evidence they had ever been there at all. Ares groaned long and ragged as his body met the ground. He rolled heavily onto his back and wheezed and rasped and stretched out his limbs carefully, the rope and tie in a loose tangle around him. He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. Aphrodite stood over him and pressed her toe onto his chest once more. His ember-glow eyes fluttered to hers dreamily.</p><p>She spoke softly, but firmly. “You are going to apologise to that girl, Ares, and you are never going to trick someone into bed again. Do you understand?”</p><p>Ares gazed along her leg and nodded.</p><p>She pressed harder. “Repeat the instructions back to me.”</p><p>He licked his teeth. “I am going to apologise to that girl, and I am never going to trick someone into bed again.”</p><p>Aphrodite’s face softened and she smiled, prettier than summer berries. “There’s my good Sunbeam.” She said. “It isn’t as if you need tricks, you handsome thing.”</p><p>Ares beamed like marigolds. He stroked up her calf and tugged. Aphrodite dropped to her knees astride him with a merry squeak and steadied herself with her hands on his sturdy shoulders. He craned upwards and scooped his hands into her hair and brought her into a kiss that moved the earth beneath her. It was slow, indulgent, giving. He sighed deeply as he broke it and collapsed back into the grass and murmured. “You’re such an incredible bitch.”</p><p>Aphrodite made an offended noise and pinched his arm.</p><p>He laughed sonorously and sat up and wrapped her in his arms. “It’s my favourite thing about you.” He grinned and kissed her adoringly again.</p><p>They sank into each other. Aphrodite’s body had gone from tingling to simmering to crying out for Ares. The lingering salt of his cock and the spiced honey of his mouth muddled in her senses. His huge, robust body enveloped her like a trinket box did a diamond. His arms were so secure and his lips were so fervent and his warmth was so penetrating. She ran her hands on the contours of his torso and shoulders and up into the soft cotton of his hair. Her pulse kicked up.</p><p>“So,” Ares whispered against her lips. “Did that turn you on?”</p><p>Aphrodite laughed. “Don’t be cocky.”</p><p>Ares grinned and hugged her tighter. “I’m not being cocky, I just know how you like me.”</p><p>“Brat.”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>Their kiss deepened. Ares twisted a lock of her hair in his hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”</p><p>She pecked his cheek then returned to his lips. “I don’t want you to think it’s easy for you.”</p><p>He chuckled and nipped her chin and laid his hands on her pinched waist and teased the ticklish spot just under her rib cage. “I promise I don’t. I just want to know if I can make it up to you.”</p><p>She wriggled in his lap and tugged the roots of his hair. “Incorrigible.”</p><p>He smiled and it crinkled his nose. “Irresistible.”</p><p>She blushed hyacinth and closed her eyes and dropped her forehead to his, a sweet mixture of relaxation and arousal spreading through her. His hands moved gently. They stroked up her thighs to the bunched hem of her dress and pulled at it carefully, rolling the tight garment up her body and over her head and placing it respectfully beside them. Demeter's letter fluttered, ignored, into the grass. Aphrodite's flesh spilled out as it was freed and he stared with his mouth a little open. The dusky pink lace of her lingerie barely veiled her, the blackcurrant points of her nipples peeking through the bra, the weave so fine it looked almost more tattooed than worn. He dusted his hands over her skin, his breath falling to a captivated slowness. The heat of his touch was deliciously enticing. Aphrodite rolled her body and combed her fingers through her hair. As she opened her throat, he ducked to it and kissed it over and over. She sighed and purred. She draped her arms over his shoulders and slid forward to cage him between her thighs. The orchard had fallen into silence, broken only by the silken scuff of skin on skin. Ares drew his fingertips over her hips and up her back and deftly unhooked her bra and plucked it away. She leaned back to let him, her breath and blood skipping as he exposed her and gazed longingly, then closed his eyes and fell to her breasts. He covered her in tender kisses, flickering his tongue on her, scorching her with his breath. Every inch his mouth touched came alive. His arms cradled her softly and he slipped his lips around her nipples and sucked them to tormenting sensitivity. Aphrodite fell back into his grasp and moaned low, murmuring to him, telling him how much she loved his touch, telling him not to stop, to always touch her like this, like Ares.</p><p>He never took his mouth or his hands from her. He cupped her curves and teased the secret places he knew exactly how to craze. He ran his lips and his tongue over her lavender skin until it was glistening and pulsing wildly. His fingertips traced the lace of her panties. He could feel the give of wet flesh underneath and it tempted him like wine. He pressed until he heard her breath falter, then he began to massage, feeling the juices flowing in earnest now. Even in its gentleness, Ares’ touch sent shockwaves through Aphrodite. She plunged her tongue into his mouth and rocked her hips into the press of his fingertips, coaxing him to clutch her with the full length of his fingers. He obeyed with a quiet, cocky murmur and she ground on the cup of his hand and fell headlong into the sensation. His hand was large and it covered her, encased her in heat, made it so that she could scoop her hips vigorously and never lose his touch. She was growing breathless. Images cascaded in her mind, of him bound, of him beaten, of him writhing, whimpering, laughing, giving chase, leaving her, coming home. She clung to him and pressed their flesh together so his warmth was everywhere, so their heartbeats fell into step. She pulled kiss after kiss from his lips.</p><p>“My Ares.”</p><p>“Always and forever.”</p><p>His kiss turned reassuring, confident, it locked them together and threw away the key. Then it grew in intensity and with a playful growl Ares flung them sideways and cast her onto her back, landing with his arms straight either side of her, grinning like a jaguar. Aphrodite’s cheeks burned. He looked down at her, his eyes roving from the wine spill of her hair in the grass down the ravishing sculpt of her body. Aphrodite bit her lip and tilted her knees outward to open her legs. His eyes were drawn instantly. He licked his lip. A bolt of exhilaration hit her. She snaked her hips, inviting him, taunting him. He flexed his shoulders and lowered onto her. His lips padded to hers, then they travelled leisurely down her body. Every time he kissed her she felt like he was lighting a votive candle in that spot. She was almost unbearably hot, peppered with tiny flames and furiously impatient as he slowed and slowed the closer he drew to her clit. He lingered on her belly for countable minutes and she felt his smile curl on her skin as she wriggled and sneaked her fingers into his hair and pushed him lightly to make the last inch.</p><p>“You are the most awful tease.” She said with a pout.</p><p>“If you recall, Plum Blossom.” He chuckled into her belly button, leaning lazily on his forearms. “You could have had this when I first arrived in the orchard, but you decided to slap me away.”</p><p>Aphrodite tweaked his ear and snaked her hips again. “Don’t pretend you don’t want this as much as I do.”</p><p>Ares grinned. His lips drifted down and hovered over the pink veil misting her black-cherry gleam. “Fair point.” He plucked the hem of her panties with his teeth and shot her a mischievous glance. He slid away through the grass and pulled the panties with him, dragging them down the length of her legs with them clamped in his smirk. His eyes flashed scarlet as she lifted her knees to help him slide them off and stretched her seam. He dropped the panties in the crocuses. He lunged back up and dove like a falcon. He pressed his mouth to her tenderness.</p><p>It was like a flare gun firing. Desire and relief fizzed across her body as the desperate ache in her clit was drowned in sensation. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she moaned out loud and high. Ares’ gentleness dissolved like sherbet. He feasted on her with relish. He covered her with the searing heat of his mouth and buried his tongue in her flesh, lashing her with it, gorging on her gushing. Gods, she was like a wellspring. It made his mouth slip around her, whisking the sensation wilder. Aphrodite twisted in the daisies, breathing heavily and pushing her hips pleadingly up to fill his mouth. She grasped clumps of grass in her hands and shivered and swore. She pressed her cheek into the cool earth and spied the discarded bundle of rope and satin lying close by and beamed and giggled and rolled her hips to coax his tongue deeper. He made a rough sound of satisfaction that buzzed through her and scooped his arms under her to lift her up to him. He sucked and speared her with the point of his tongue, casting waves of pleasure across her thighs and abdomen. Her stomach was full of butterflies and they kept sending airy giggles and gasps from her lips. She propped herself on her elbows to drive a hard rhythm, fucking his mouth so he had to fight back against her with ardour. She gazed at the medley of peach marks down his body from the Graces, at the easy rise and fall of the calmed, unknotted muscles in his back as he threw himself into this. He looked like tenderised steak.</p><p>He lapped the length of her and her legs trembled. She squeaked and collapsed onto her back again and closed her thighs, clamping him. The blood rushed in Ares’ ears. He lost his hearing, his sight, everything became taste and scent and he gave himself over to it utterly.</p><p>The earth rolled under Aphrodite. The stained-glass light through the blossom sparkled and teemed. They had found a rhythm and were moving together now as if in a tango, ebbing and flowing into each other so that waves washed over Aphrodite, eroding her like limestone. She felt ready to crumble away into the earth, to become nothing but this feeling for the rest of time. She thrust herself into it.</p><p>Ares felt her movements speeding up, growing urgent. His heart was racing again. He had been dining on her gluttonously, but as she bucked he whipped her with his tongue and began to flicker it rapidly around her, faster than her pulse, faster than her whispers, indecipherable save for the intoxicating repeat of his name.</p><p>Aphrodite gasped and moaned and arched her back in ecstasy. She was on the brink, teetering, toppling, tearing the grass and breathing sharp and shallow. “Yes… Ares… Fuck…” She clung to him with her legs as his lips ground like a quern-stone and his tongue serpentined and struck her deep in her flesh, stirring her, churning her, bringing her to the boil. He gripped her ass, white-knuckled, and his curls jostled as he dipped and drove. She could feel his hunger at her core, his insatiability, his ravenous worship. He pressed deeper, firmer, faster, again, again.</p><p>“Gods!” The waves took her. They broke over her explosively and surged across her body, drowning her and sweeping her away in a tsunami of pleasure and release. She screamed into the branches and shook and spasmed, lightning in her veins and thunder in her flesh. The final Spring blossom buds above them burst open and shimmered with life. It calmed to a lulling, lapping tide, and lingered beautifully. The feel of the ground slowly returned beneath her, but her heart and stomach stayed afloat. Ares’ grip slackened and he raised his head as her thighs released him. His hair was wild and his eyes were bright and there was a slick shine across his delirious smile. She blinked herself back to consciousness and spied him peeking at her from behind the mounds of her body. They beamed at each other like drunk teenagers. Ares exhaled and the momentum carried him down to rest his brow on her belly. He stayed there a while and she stroked his hair. Their breathing steadied and quietened. Birdsong trickled back into the orchard.</p><p>Ares tilted his face up. “That taste may be the thing I miss most when I’m away.”</p><p>Aphrodite twisted his forelock around her finger and stroked his temple. “You should go away less.”</p><p>He huffed out and dropped his face back into her belly and kissed it softly, his voice came muffled. “Agreed.”</p><p>A dove cooed overhead. Aphrodite looked at Ares’ prone, relaxed body. She thought about his new scars, the stain over his stomach, his casual comment about being <em>what</em> on a <em>tree</em>? She brushed his hair. “Why didn’t you tell me you were injured?”</p><p>Ares raised his head. The look on Aphrodite’s face was one of deep, aching concern. He melted before it. He hooked his hand under the crook of her leg and rubbed her thigh, kissed the inside of it and leaned his cheek against it. “I didn’t want to freak you out.”</p><p>“I only freak out when I don’t know, Sunbeam. I need to know so I can help you.”</p><p>“I was in the mortal realm, I had no way of reaching you. It wasn’t so bad an injury anyway.”</p><p>“You said you were impaled on a tree.”</p><p>Ares sucked his lips into a flat line and glanced away. “I did say that, yes.”</p><p>Aphrodite pushed up on her elbows and frowned curiously from behind a sweep of lavender locks. “I don’t understand how it’s faded so fast.”</p><p>“Persephone healed me.”</p><p>“Demeter said she treated your wound.”</p><p>“No, Soda Pop. She healed me.” He looked at her levelly. “She’s a fertility goddess.”</p><p>Aphrodite’s mouth rounded into a soft, surprised O. Ares watched her take in the information, dwell on it for a moment, then file it away somewhere in her puzzle box of a brain. “Well.” She said distantly. “What do you know.” She flicked her vixen smile back onto her face. “You have a type, huh?”</p><p>Ares rocked straight on his forearms and laughed heartily. “I absolutely have a type. I got it the first time I saw you, you gorgeous fucking unmaker of men.”</p><p>Aphrodite’s laughter chimed like wedding bells. He grabbed her calf and pulled her, sweeping her onto her back and bringing her underneath him, closing her in his arms and crushing her into a deep, devoted kiss. She returned it with ferocity and rolled him onto his side and wrapped him with her legs, splaying her hands on his smooth chest and feeling for his heartbeat. She found it under her ring finger, strong and steady. The tastes of each other’s bodies lingered on their mouths. He freed his lips and pulled his head back to look at her. He stroked her cheek.</p><p>“Hey.” He said.</p><p>“Mmm?”</p><p>“Are we good?”</p><p>Aphrodite smiled. She breathed the scents of blossom and honey and lavender soap, sweat and sex and Spring bulbs. She looked into the hearth of his eyes. “We’re good, Honey Bear.”</p><p>They folded into each other’s arms. Above them in the tangled canopy, a pair of doves nestled into a peach tree and trilled in low, loving harmony.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you to @chinchela_art (Instagram and Patreon) for the "Welcome to Kinktown" prompt - go look at her very pretty art!</p><p>Remember when you're getting kinky, keep it Safe (check your technique), Sane (check your frame of mind) and Consensual (check your partner). Basics of BDSM <a href="https://www.annsummers.com/bondage/help-advice/guide-to-bondage.html">here</a>. Guide on bondage <a href="https://www.annsummers.com/bondage/help-advice/choosing-the-perfect-restraints.html">here</a>. Guide on impact <a href="https://www.annsummers.com/bondage/help-advice/guide-to-spanking.html">here</a>. Have fun, lovelies!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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